Empathy Retreat: Inclusive Dialogue

Iris Popescu is an architect specialized in inclusive design and accessibility, she has dedicated her career to developing the social responsibility of architects and other relevant stakeholders, while emphasizing the benefits of using empathy in design in order to reshape our built environment into one that embraces diversity and empowers all individuals. to participate actively in the life of the community. By founding AMAIS, coordinating impactful and diverse projects, and pioneering research in the field of accessibility, she championed the cause of creating equitable environments for people with permanent, temporary or contextual disabilities. With a PhD in architecture and leadership roles in international organizations such as the International Union of Architects, where she is the Director of Region II, part of the Architecture for All working group, she is committed to driving global change and advocating for inclusive design principles. As the author of the first inclusive design guide in Romania and a validated expert for URBACT, she actively contributes to shaping an equitable society, transforming accessibility and inclusion into natural parts of the design process.

Despite the increasing resources on inclusion, accessibility biases persist in the built environment. Inclusive design solutions are often developed in parallel to architecture, intersecting at the end of the projects. A 2019-2020 survey with 87 Romanian professionals (69% architects) revealed a confusion between accessibility retrofitting and inclusive design, reflected in the poor accessibility of public spaces.Developing an inclusive built environment requires collaboration between various stakeholders, including architects, public administration, engineers, developers, and activists. Empathy exercises are essential to shift perspectives, moving beyond disability simulations to involving people of diverse abilities that can bring their lived experience into the conversation. In 2022, we organised The Empathy Retreat, an intersectional research project in which the participants contributed to writing the first Romanian inclusive design guide. We brought together 32 people of different ages, from various social and professional categories, among them architects, urban planners, expert citizens, public administration, activists, from the queer spectrum, with visual, locomotor, hearing disabilities, neurodivergent people or (temporarily) without disabilities.The retreat emphasized understanding human diversity, intersectionality and inclusion through a 3 days program: Listen & Share: Discovering personal stories, identifying biases and exclusion situations. Experience: Identifying obstacles in Sibiu's public spaces, sharing diverse experiences. Analyze & Act: Learning about inclusive design, conducting accessibility analyses, and discussing participants’ expectations from an inclusive design guide. The results included changes in participants' perspectives and professional practices and the publication of Romania's first inclusive design guide. Follow-up surveys showed shifts in how participants perceive disability, with many integrating inclusive practices into their work. The retreat was an inclusive context of dialogue that helped us give participants the aha-moments they needed to see accessibility and inclusion as a natural part of the design process. Designing and facilitating initiatives like this provide professionals within the built environment with insights, essential for them to adopt inclusion as a guiding principle in their practice.Further research is needed to include the empathy exercises into academic curricula, overcoming biases.